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A different way of telling a story

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Blistering performances.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

What the hell was this? Cheap story, acting, sets, cinematography, lighting, music, etc Interesting idea, but the story and dialogue was just plain poor. Some interesting parts.Rating is a D, for effort, or 3 stars. Not worth seeing!What the hell was this? Cheap story, acting, sets, cinematography, lighting, music, etcInteresting idea, but the story and dialogue was just plain poor. Some interesting parts. Rating is a D, for effort, or 3 stars. Not worth seeing!

This was the first of 3 pilots which started with Roddenberry's theme about someone from the past waking up in a post apocalyptical future. Roddenberry also wrote a second movie, Planet Earth with the same concept and characters. But despite the fans love for Roddenberry, he really missed the mark on this one. This theme was just the opposite of what the baby boomers wanted to see and the opposite of the Star Trek Utopian society. Even the third film without Roddenberry, had the same problems.The reason Star Trek was so popular was because it was a Utopian futuristic society which had risen above wars, violence, disease, poverty, racism and discrimination. It depicted mankind learning from its mistakes and building a peaceful society of exploration, cooperation, invention and forward progress. That Utopian approach appealed to the war weary viewers of this era.This Trilogy about Pax did exactly the opposite. It showed the degradation of society. Each film, while claiming Pax peace... was filled with violence, segregation, themes of hatred and slavery. Themes of technological regression. These were the very things that this generation of viewers hated. No one wanted to see shows depicting societal disintegration and backward momentum into archaic, violent existences. These were offensive themes which no one wanted to view even once, let alone on a weekly episode.Even worse, the interpretations of ideal societies as depicted on these shows such as an ancient Rome type of society... were the perceptions and desires of people born in the 20's instead of the views of the generations who were the target audience... the baby boomers.Our generation hated wars and poverty, discrimination, big brother, environmental damage and establishmentarianism most of all. They wanted to see peace, progress, no poverty, no disease, clean air, no fossil fuels, technological advancement... just like Star Trek.This trilogy was just the opposite of the themes preferred by both the peace generation or the yuppie generation that followed. Both generations were antiwar. Conversely, this PAX series was one violent conflict after another despite the fact that they called their society by a name for peace. It was just the opposite. Even worse, the core character from the past was a violent man who managed to judge and then destroy one society after another. In this story, it is the Mr Macho main character against an entire Amazonistic society. This kind of macho mentality did not go over well with the baby boomers either.The first 2 movies written by Roddenberry had the same core problem as the last version which he was not affiliated with. Don't get me wrong. I also idolized Roddenberry but it seemed like no one involved with these movies understood why these three movies failed to generate a series. They simply did not get it... which is surprising considering that Roddenberry was the one who originally understood the concept of the Utopian society during the strong anti-war, pro-peace sentiment of the 60's and 70's.Perhaps if they had created a truly peaceful, technologically advanced, futuristic society for this series... it might have worked. But all three of these movies were simply unpleasant to watch. Most of us watched them out of respect for Roddenberry in the hope that he had come up with a new series. We continued to hope that they would learn their lesson in the 2nd and third movie but no such luck. It just went downhill from the onset.At the time these pilot movies were made, we had no conception that society would truly degrade as it has over the past 10 years. Who could imagine that it would go backward and not learn from its mistakes. Fortunately, Roddenberry never saw what society finally became in the 21st century. But when these shows were made, our generations still believed it would improve. How could we have guessed otherwise. While there may be some truth in how a post apocalyptic society might degrade in some distant future... our target generations were not interested in seeing it. We wanted to see forward momentum and progress... not the opposite. Thankfully, they brought back Star Trek until Berman finally managed to destroy that as well... with the same narrow minded thinking as was depicted in this violent trilogy

Legend has it that ABC TV asked Gene Roddenberry if he'd mind very much putting an ape of some sort into his TV series Genesis II. Apes were very popular at that time, of course...these were the days when a new Planet Of The Apes movie came out every ten seconds. Gene told them where they could stick their apes, and so the network cancelled the proposed 13-episode trial run for Genesis II and made...Planet Of The Apes: The Series instead. And what a triumph that was.Whether that's true or not, the fact is that ABC goofed in pulling the plug on Genesis II after the pilot movie...because of the three goes at the idea made by ABC and others, this is by far the best one. Our hero, Twentieth Century native Dylan Hunt, wakes up after a cryogenic snooze of umpteen decades to find himself in a bizarre post-holocaust world. Underground cities linked by "sub-shuttle" tube trains are host to various stratified castes of Humanity...some with two navels! Roddenberry was never a man to do deft satire when a clunkingly obvious allegorical piece would do, and here we have a classic example. Genesis II plays like an episode of Classic Trek without Spock and company, only with a somewhat higher budget. The story's pretty terrible, as is most of the dialogue, but there's enough giddy 70s frills to make it worth watching. Trek vets Ted Cassidy, Mariette Hartley and Majel Barrett (Nepotism? What's that?) are along for the ride with our hero, played by Alex Cord. Cord's no great shakes acting wise, but he does the hero bit well enough. There was definite potential for a series here...a series which would've lasted about as long as Planet Of The Apes did, admittedly ...so it's a great pity the promising potential of the pilot was never followed up.The two remakes of the concept which followed, Planet Earth and Strange New World (both starring John Saxon as our modern day Rip Van Winkle), were so bad they defy description. Glen Larson lifted more than a wee bit of Gene's ideas when he presented Buck Rogers for the small screen 8 years later...and finally, more than two decades after GII was shot, the idea became a series in the form of the rather derivative Andromeda.Of all of Gene's 70s pilots, The Questor Tapes was probably the one that deserved to be a weekly show the most, but Genesis II comes a close second. Bot brilliant, but certainly good enough to be worth 13 or 14 more episodes.Why this is not available on DVD or VHS baffles me...hell, none of the Gene pilots are. Planet Earth is shown on TV here very rarely...it's appalling, but at least it's rerun now and then. All I can remember of GII are fragments from the NZ broadcast when I was about 4 years old. Surely every Trekkie worth his phaser would snap these pilots up on DVD? Hell, I'd even watch Planet Earth again...something I vowed never to do...if it came out on disc.

The story of Rip Van Winkle is one of the most endearing - and enduring - tales in Western literature. Too bad Roddenberry decided to rewrite it so ham-handedly. Mind you, it's not like he didn't try to front-load "Genesis II" with familiar and/or pretty faces, like Alex Cord as the stalwart scientist and the stunningly beautiful Mariette Hartley as Lira-a, or the hulking Ted "Lurch" Cassidy as Isiah. Problem is, this alone can't carry a series; other things help. Little things like good writing, decent sets, decent, if not state-of-the-art effects. "Genesis II" was short on all counts. One thing it wasn't short on was goofy ideas, like the deification of Freud, or Hartley's dual navels (what was THAT all about?). Taken on balance, the whole show probably started out as a good idea from a timeless classic that was run into the ground by an overdose of Post-Hippie murky philosophies, ridiculous dialogue, and a general air of "we've seen this before. Somewhere". Occasionally, in this life, some of us, if we're lucky, will publish a Pulitzer Prize book, write an Oscar winning screenplay, or perform to standing O's at Carnegie Hall. If we're real lucky, we may get to do it again. Roddenberry wasn't one of those people. He apparently had the Midas touch: everything he tried after "Star Trek" turned to manure, the worst being "The Questor Tapes". Now, that one you could fertilize the Sinai Peninsula with. As far as "Genesis II" goes, some things, as Alex Cord must have undoubtedly realized after being revived, are best left buried.